"Fred Karno's army" meaning in All languages combined

See Fred Karno's army on Wiktionary

Proper name [English]

IPA: /fɹɛd ˈkɑːnəʊz ɑːmiː/ [UK]
Etymology: From the First World War marching tune "We're Fred Karno's Army", ultimately from the slapstick music hall entertainer Fred Karno. Head templates: {{en-proper noun}} Fred Karno's army
  1. (UK, slang) A chaotic, poorly-managed group. Tags: UK, slang Synonyms: Karno's army, Fred Carno's army [misspelling], Carno's army [misspelling]

Download JSON data for Fred Karno's army meaning in All languages combined (2.2kB)

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  "etymology_text": "From the First World War marching tune \"We're Fred Karno's Army\", ultimately from the slapstick music hall entertainer Fred Karno.",
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          "ref": "1951 November 28, Anthony Head, “New Clause.—(ENROLMENT.)”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), volume 494, column 1656",
          "text": "Whatever any hon. Member in any part of the Committee thinks about the advisability of this Bill, they all wish the Force that eventually is created to be an efficient one and not a Fred Karno's army.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1973, John Pellow, With a Little Help from My Friends, page 156",
          "text": "It was like bloody Fred Karno's army out there. They were sods. Drunk as lords. Been to a wedding party or something.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Craig Thomas, A Different War, page 221",
          "text": "'Honest, Marian — it's a right Fred Karno's army setup . . .'",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A chaotic, poorly-managed group."
      ],
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      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, slang) A chaotic, poorly-managed group."
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          "word": "Karno's army"
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        {
          "tags": [
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  "sounds": [
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      "ipa": "/fɹɛd ˈkɑːnəʊz ɑːmiː/",
      "tags": [
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  "word": "Fred Karno's army"
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{
  "etymology_text": "From the First World War marching tune \"We're Fred Karno's Army\", ultimately from the slapstick music hall entertainer Fred Karno.",
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      "args": {},
      "expansion": "Fred Karno's army",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "1973, John Pellow, With a Little Help from My Friends, page 156",
          "text": "It was like bloody Fred Karno's army out there. They were sods. Drunk as lords. Been to a wedding party or something.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, Craig Thomas, A Different War, page 221",
          "text": "'Honest, Marian — it's a right Fred Karno's army setup . . .'",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
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        "(UK, slang) A chaotic, poorly-managed group."
      ],
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      "ipa": "/fɹɛd ˈkɑːnəʊz ɑːmiː/",
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      "word": "Karno's army"
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    {
      "tags": [
        "misspelling"
      ],
      "word": "Carno's army"
    }
  ],
  "word": "Fred Karno's army"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (8203a16 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.